Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday January 26, 2010 @11:18AM
from the hall-monitor-death-robots-here-we-come dept.

Julie188 writes "A decade ago, Lawrence Grossman, former president of both NBC News and PBS, and Newton Minow, former chairman of the FCC, proposed that the government set up a multi-billion dollar trust that would act as a 'venture capital fund' to research educational technologies for schools, libraries and museums. Congress has finally approved the idea, and grants could start rolling by this fall. Dubbed the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, it should be to education what the National Science Foundation is for science, and DARPA is for national defense."

Not true at all. An acronym is simply the first letter of each (or most) word(s) in a phrase. They are often pronounceable, for convenience. FLIR (Fleer) is much shorter than Forward Looking Infra-red Radar (nice acronym inside of an acronym). Others are not pronounceable, such as FCS (Future Combat Systems) or NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical), but are still easier to say the acronym than the entire phrase.

An acronym is an abbreviation SPOKEN as if it was a word, as opposed to being spoken letter by letter. If your definition were the case, then there would be no need for two words that mean the same thing. All acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms (see square vs. rectangle).

Don't cite wikipedia or some other bastion of ignorance at me. Dictionaries write down every misuse of a word. Then some idiot says "look, it's in the dic

You were lucky! All I had was a lousy National Endowment for the Arts. Every day I'd have some jerkoff smearing my walls with feces in the shape of the Virgin Mary in exchange for grant money. It was a nightmare.

It will soon become another haven for educationally trained money sponges which will produce nothing but studies and unworkable pie in the sky "solutions" to employ yet more educationally trained money sponges.

There is so much potential to leverage technology to make schools better too.

Current technology is all about transmitting large amounts of information to multiple sources and presenting it in different forms. Imagine being able to easily leverage the plans and methods of the "best" teacher in the country for your particular subject. Having good templates for making lessons more interactive using technology instead of sitting watching a lecture / screen.

About time someone in government considers education as important as military "defense" and scientific breakthroughs.

The current government-subsidized inflation in universities indicates to me that they are already vastly overfunded. Plus you have millions of people who can pay for their education. Same goes for scientific "breakthroughs". There's plenty of money coming out of government right now. Why pay for your own research when you can get the public to do it for you?

So we can pay for our own education and our own research, but who is allowed to pay for their own defense? That makes defense spending necessary unli

That makes defense spending necessary unlike education and research spending.

Tell that to companies like Kodak and Motorola who have made trillions on the sale of digital cameras that have their origins with the publicly-funded Hubble program. Governments need to fund research simply because businesses won't unless they see immediate value in it. Hell, the ubiquitous laser was called "a solution looking for a problem" when it was invented 50 years ago and we see how well that turned out. Most scientis

The laser printer was invented 41 years ago, not 50, and it was invented at Xerox PARC. Given that this was a private, corporate, research centre, it's a pretty terrible example of the fact that private companies won't do research. At the time, it was too expensive to be competitive with other solutions. The first office laser printer was shipped by Xerox ten years after their first working prototypes and cost over $15,000 (around $35,000 in today's money), so calling it a solution looking for a problem

Great history lesson. I did not, however, say "laser printer", I said "laser" which was "invented" in 1959 (it was built on previous technologies and theories, but LASER was introduced to the world in the 1959 paper "The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"). I also didn't say private companies won't do research, I said that unless have a practical application, you're not going to get funding. Starkweather's research of the laser printer was a corporate-funded endeavor to produ

Not to be too pedantic but "trillions?" Really? The US Economy is about $12T/year, Federal budget is about $2T/year. How can digital camera sales make up some measurable percentage of that whole economy? Maybe you can provide some citation on that assertion?

You're just wrong. Even if we ignore the blatant error of your statements about the origin and economics of digital cameras, NASA spinoffs are myths. My view is that NASA funding is simply another source, like the US military (which incidentally does a lot more of this sort of funding) for doing research that would have happened anyway. The problem is simply that we see what was done, not what could have been done. So you see the research tainted by NASA funding and for some reason assume that the presence

1) Your story about Kodak and Motorola making "trillions" on the sale of digital cameras from the research on Hubble fails for two reasons. First, CCD cameras predate Hubble by decades. Second, Kodak and Motorola aren't making trillions on the sale of digital cameras. The whole market isn't that big to justify the label of "trillions". None of these companies have anything to do with Hubble's optics. That honor went to Perkin-Elmer, Inc, the actual contractor for Hubble.

Could you please explain to me how the federal government researching better educational methods violates the 10th amendment? Please. I'd love to hear it. This program isn't taking any power away from anything. It is just funding research into educational methods.

For those whom do not know, 10th Amendment is: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

well-- the 10th amendment seems pretty clear: unless it's spelled out in the constitution, leave it to the states or the people. So, the real question is your own:
Could you please explain to me where the feds get the right to do this? Which part of the constitution allows this?

"Could you please explain to me how the federal government researching better educational methods violates the 10th amendment?"

I think that the OP chose poor wording and got the discussion going in the wrong direction. You shouldn't have to explain how a specific law "violates" The Constitution. That whole line of thinking rests upon the FALSE premise that "The government can do anything unless it's prohibited by The Constitution." The question should be "What part of The Constitution authorizes the Fe

Do you really think that improving education doesn't fall under "promote the general welfare"? It has just as much justification as "provide for the common defense". Especially since Jefferson and other founders believed so strongly that a representative government would fail without educated citizens, you could also argue that support for education is necessary to "secure the blessings of liberty."

"I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:393

Technology has the potential to break the monopoly of school districts and classrooms. Right now kids are taught primarily one way. In groups of 20-30 they sit in classrooms and get education from a teacher. The quality of the teacher in process and as fountain of knowledge gos a long way in determining the success of the student. With proper infrastructure each kid can be taught in the way they learn best from the best instructors with the local teachers being facilitators of finding the knowledge. In addition to no child being left behind, we can get no child held back.

because your going to have to ditch the educator unions too. Its a jobs program, both for those who went to school to teach and those who know the right people. The ratio of employees (teachers, admins, etc) to students has never been higher and education just keeps becoming less and less.

CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the U.S. and worldwide. Using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the "FlexBook," CK-12 intends to pioneer the generation and distribution of high quality educational content that will serve both as core text as well as provide an adaptive environment for learning.

If a parent doesn't care about a kid's education then no, there's no way to get them to care. The trouble is the educators themselves talk up a good "parental involvement" but the fact is the only involvement they want from parents is fund raising.

As a parent who cared about his kids' education this was an immense frustration to me.

Do you think this is because of the quality of the teachers or the administrators?
In my experience teachers are often very open to different avenues of parental involvement and new education approaches but are often handcuffed by bureaucracy and poor administrators.
I'm hoping these funds will act like a big fat carrot to get these administrations to update their lines of thinking and adapt.

I'm hoping these funds will act like a big fat carrot to get these administrations to update their lines of thinking and adapt.

More likely it will act like a big fat carrot to get these administrations to write up proposals as to why they need that money to keep doing things the way they always have. If it has to go to "innovation" they'll argue as to how the way they've always done things is "innovative".

Definately the teachers. I'd go to a parent-teacher conference with my concerns, have the teacher agree completely, and then act as if there never was a conference. This wasn't just one teacher, either, it was all of them, with both daughters.

I blame the low pay teachers get. It doesn't attract the best and brightest. I don't think any of my or my kids' teachers were Mensa candidates and I know for a fact my own teachers back in the stone age had IQs less than 100. I had an English teacher fail one of my pa

That's because teachers have to deal with parents who only show up once their little johnny gets an F for not turning in some assignment. The parents then call the school to complain about the teacher not giving little johnny a chance.

But it might provide some motivated kids and teachers with some new tools and content to get a better education despite the system they're stuck in. For example, if only four kids want to take calculus at (say) Crenshaw in LA, they're screwed b/c you can't set up a calculus class with only four kids, without Jaime Escalante-like dedication from a teacher.

But with online tools, you can potentially let those four kids learn with online programs and remote teacher interaction with less time required from local

The reason is two experiences: one me in school, and the other my youngest daughter in school.

When I was a kid they came up with the "new math". Basically, it was a different way to do long division. The theory was that this new way better explained how numbers work, but in reality it did no such thing. All it did was to prevent my parents from helping with my homework, since I couldn't do long dividion like they did and they couldn't do it like I was taught. I was at a disadvantage for years, until I learned how to use a slide rule, which actually did teach me how numbers worked.

When my daughter was in kindergarten they had a new thing called "invented spelling", and it was an unmitigated disaster. She still misspells many words the same way she misspelled them before she learned to read (she's 22 now).

The truble with new teaching technologies is that unlike medical experiments, you can't do them on animals first. Test them on real kids and if the experiment fails, so do the children.

When my daughter was in kindergarten they had a new thing called "invented spelling", and it was an unmitigated disaster. She still misspells many words the same way she misspelled them before she learned to read (she's 22 now).

The truble with new teaching technologies is that unlike medical experiments, you can't do them on animals first.

The idea was good. Following a strict step by step procedure and stressing out and getting stuck is the right way to go math (?) but miserably fails for language arts. If you can't figure out one word, get on with life and finish the rest of the task. Its also a great way to learn to read, if you can't figure out one word, don't chuck the book across the room and go play donkey kong, just work around it, you'll figure it out later by osmosis or whatever. Its like solving an equation by successive approximation vs simple plug and chug.

Now, before BBS leet speak, email, SMS, myspace, kids had good osmosis sources. I never learned anything in English classes in school, I learned English solely by osmosis from Clarke, Asimov, and whomever wrote the Tom Swift and Hardy Boys Mysteries.

The bad news, is now kids learn English by osmosis from illiterate morons on myspace, youtube, rap videos, text messages, etc. That directly leads to:

She still misspells many words the same way she misspelled them before she learned to read (she's 22 now).

My spelling was terrible as a child. We had spelling tests every week, and I regularly got under 50%. It remained terrible until I was 14, at which point I was allowed to type most of my essays (GCSE coursework can be either handwritten or typed). I used Word 6, which underlined spelling mistakes in red. If I used a correct spelling, I could move on. If I used an incorrect one, there was immediate feedback and I had to interrupt my flow, make the correction, and then carry on. Lots of people criticise

I actually laughed out loud at that BBC article. Partly because I used to live in England and was amazed at the number of teenagers who never continued school beyond age 16 (and spent their afternoons loitering in Harrogate like brain-dead zombies, incessantly texting each other), but partly because that is one of the most laughable findings I've ever read. I'd like to see the full study to see what bias would actually allow an otherwise intelligent being to come up with the hypothesis that "txting is gr8 4

I've found that this kind of stuff is prevalent throughout all grades of school - and it annoys the hell out of me. I have a room-mate who went to the same school I did, one Grade Behind me. We both took full physics and chem 30 in high school. We were playing 1 vs 100 one night (It was actually like this weekend) and one of the questions was "The Quantum Particle known as the Gluon has an effect which force?" (or something to that effect) and the answers were A) Gravity B) Magnetism C) Strong Force.

Bullshit, how would they learn? There were no books on the subject until the stupid thing had been done away with. There was no internet then, and it took a few years for a book to reach the bookstore, let alone the library.

Some parents got tutors (other children) to help their children

All the other kids were in the same boat. As with books, there were no tutors.

Some parents just said "Figure it out, and if you can't--ask your teacher

To build support for the project, the group created three prototypes: an educational video game for biology students called Immune Attack; a game for museums, called Discovering Babylon; and a computer simulation to train firefighters in high-rise fires. They typify the projects the center will be looking to finance.

So, basically, its about building a virtual simulation that costs more per user than doing something real? My guess is the immune system video game will cost more than buying books, microscopes, and slides. The Babylon museum game (wtf?) will cost more than a field trip to a real museum. The virtual fire fighting simulator will cost more than having the building trades class build a freaking building.

The National Science Foundation, Mr. Grossman said, started in 1950 with a six-figure appropriation; its fiscal year 2009 appropriation was nearly $6.5 billion.

Ahh, thats the goal, build a new bureaucracy. God knows we need more million d

The virtual fire fighting simulator does have one advantage: you can't die if you fail. Even a very carefully built real world training building is dangerous enough to kill the trainees. It's not a bad thing to give them detailed first person training in a simulator first. That and it's specifically for high-rises, which are not as cheap to build as you might hope. I've seen plenty of firefighter training video of fires in wooden structures maybe five stories tall. I've never seen firefighter training

You obviously don't know what you are talking about. DARPA does (and did) many things besides working on missile defense and laser tech. You might remember Internet to be one of it. More modestly I actually work on a DARPA project for next generation electronics. Hardly something confined in missiles.

I hope they allocate some money for existing projects, personal favorites are LTSP [ltsp.org] and FOG Project [fogproject.org]; both of which are used in schools and my own personal computer lab for fun.

I'd hate to see the money dumped into new projects that cost way too much, and don't do half of what already exists out there.

Yes, I hope they give money to a free open source solution like FOG as well.
Kidding aside, you're completely right. Projects can often be leveraged in new spaces with the proper application, which requires proper funding.

I admit, IMLS [imls.gov] doesn't do education in general, but they've been around for some time, and fund museums and libraries. US Dept. of Education has some grants for education... so the only thing differentiating this one from stuff that's well established is that it's all about 'digital technologies'.

I'm less than impressed. All that this is going to do is add bureaucracy. You're going to have people attempting to apply for grants at all of the available places, and with such limited funding, I wouldn't be s

That acronym still needs work (NCRAIDT?), but it's nice to see the Education Department taking responsibility for, you know, doing their job. There has been significant grumbling among some scientists that we've essentially been forced to include pre-university educational plans in our NSF research grants.

For God's sake, schools are considering getting rid of science classes [blogspot.com] because they "need more money for struggling minorities." That is how severe the need for privatizing and depoliticizing the process is. The politically correct would rather pull everyone down so that no one is left behind (because we're all not moving for

US public schools still have no common/minimal national curriculum. Before you, idiots, will start developing your "educational technologies" you will have to wrestle public school curriculum out of your States' hands.

and even if it wasn't, the WORST thing we could do is entrust our education system to the Federal government.

Except all other countries with better-educated population have just that.

The Federal government has no enumerated power to interfere in the educational system, so we would need a Constituional Amendment to get education "out of the state's hands" Thank $deity that's never going to happen.

I'm not certain how the bureaucracy is going to work, but there are tools being developed right now for education that are really kind of neat. If you ask almost any teacher, they'll tell you the biggest problem with teaching kids is simply keeping them awake in class. Tools that are designed to allow more interaction are important. Not all teachers can be Mr. Smith from Junior High who would dance on his desk while reading a chapter Dante's Inferno to the class or Mrs. Peabody who speaks in Olde English phrases for the entire two months of Shakespeare. So if someone can piece together technology to make your boring teachers fun again, I'm all for it.

There's a tool developed by...I can never remember...I want to say somewhere in Washington State. Basically the teacher gives two students (volunteers) tablet PCs and she has her own. She projects her laptop, and the other two tablets can be viewed (along with her own) through a program on the rest of the students' laptops, phones, etc. She goes about teaching her course. The tablet students take notes through a piece of software, make adjustments to a copy of her slides, etc. The other students use the same software to view all this, including able to do cool things like highlight words and get quick definitions. It's sort of collaborative note-taking. And all of the teacher's original slides as well as all the notes from the tablet users are stored online for later viewing.

How does this help? Because the tablet students may take notes you're not thinking of, right or wrong, and it opens your mind right there and then to alternative thoughts. You're not stuck re-writing what the teacher is doing and trying to think on it later. You're more engaged this way. But most importantly, you're paying attention, either to the teacher or the tablet users' writing. The teacher even said she doesn't really ever look back on the tablet users' notes. She'll occasionally hear giggles from the class but to her, that just means they aren't asleep.

"There's a tool developed by...I can never remember...I want to say somewhere in Washington State. Basically the teacher gives two students (volunteers) tablet PCs and she has her own. She projects her laptop, and the other two tablets can be viewed (along with her own) through a program on the rest of the students' laptops, phones, etc. She goes about teaching her course. The tablet students take notes through a piece of software, make adjustments to a copy of her slides, etc..."

Create open source course materials, and put all the textbook companies out of business! Textbooks should be a collaborative effort between teachers with decades of experience in real classroom settings, not work-for-hire by companies that have a vested interest in revising the text every year just to sell a few more copies. Of course, the lobbyists for the publishing houses might have some objections to this plan...

You may be closer to the mark than anyone else. There are active conversations going on in DC about how to open up the content and learning systems markets to more competition. And OSS could be one key driver to accomplish that.. Coping with lobbyists is going to be a big challenge, and I'm surprised no one prior to your comment mentions that one reason things are fouled up is the market incentives in education. It's not just "crack parents who don't care" "lazy teachers just pulling a paycheck" and "stude

Case in point: the Beaverton School district, after months of study, decided to set up a new math curriculum, throw out all their existing math textbooks, and replace them, at a cost of $70,000 for the first year alone. My initial reaction: please tell us the name of the teacher you plan to lay off to afford these textbooks, so that we can honor her with a going away party.

It's not like they're redirecting massive amounts of funding towards this. The total US K-20 education budget is $1T (bigger than Defense, FYI). It's not all controlled by the Feds of course - it's highly distributed. Even so, it seems reasonable to me that spending small amount of money on "big think" projects to develop answers for the future state of education is wise. You can't fix everything with technology but you ought to be able to improve the state of technology in education at the least, and at be

I was starting to write a clever riposte to this,but I think you have a really good point. Why not spend the money on building up the public schools and teachers. That being said, there is still a need to at least stay on top of the flood of new technology. Not only to keep the kids competitive, but to actually find new ways to make use of the technology we have to make the learning process more efficient.

technology can help the classroom. many technologies don't help the classroom. educators/administrators are pressured to fight for and then use technology budgets to show how well they are educating. The big problem is they have to guess at (a) what is available, (b) what is useful, (c) what is effective. (b and c don't always coincide).

For a while technology meant 'get PCs in the schools'. Now it's more than that. I've seen more immediate benefit in a classroom from a $75 digital camcorder (showing the kid